Changing times, part one...

Jack Waterford, editor-at-large of the Canberra Times, writes: "The big challenge for any professional journalist... is that a good proportion of readers, probably more than 30%... know more about your subject than you do... [Their jobs], perhaps in the public service, or business, or academia, give them access to a lot of other information, including most of our sources of raw information...

"This reader is in a very good position to know where a journalist is right or wrong, to guess about the sources of different perspectives or angles introduced into a story, or to decide whether a report adds value to what was already known. One's reputation ultimately depends on this market's assessment of one's reliability. And it is from this 'knowing' audience that one gets most of one's stories." (Via Canberra Times)